"Other areas of thought use evolve and evolution to speak simply of
change over time. Such change over time need not have any relationship
to biological evolution via a Darwinian mechanism."

Yes, this is true, since the language of biology is spoken with biologists, for biologists and not for the general consumption. When eVo language is used to mean just 'change-over-time' it gains an unfair monopoly over change. There are many concepts that describe or explain change other than evolution. This is where I challenge those who appear to want to use 'evolution' in an almost universalistic sense.

I don't generally accept the notion that computers 'evolve,' yet at the same time recognize that there are simulations that are self-organizing or self-managing, as with some programs. The notion 'survival of the fittest' was coined by a philosopher-social thinker (H. Spencer), not a biologist. The biologists have imported some terminology and built a disciplinary grammar around them, in some ways insulating or diverting them from their original meanings.

Arago

p.s. Hope you're enjoying Lake Ontario! I've been living on the St. Lawrence (fleuve Saint Laurent) for several weeks and it is beautiful country all around!

Dave Wallace <wdwllace@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> On 6/6/07, Gregory Arago wrote:
> > Let's get the obvious off the table first: concepts do not
> 'evolve' into
> > existence!! Just the fact that the sentence reads "A. Comte
> COINED the
> > word..." is an indication that evolutionary theory is unsuitable
> to discuss
> > its origins. We can speak of human intervention, invention,
> discovery,
> > creativity, articulation, signification, etc. but we simply
> CANNOT use the
> > word 'evolution.' It simply doesn't make sense!
>

Greg

Other areas of thought use evolve and evolution to speak simply of
change over time. Such change over time need not have any relationship
to biological evolution via a Darwinian mechanism. Quite a while ago I
wrote to this list that complex computer programs often originate with
simple programs that work (in some fashion) and that are changed by
their designer/programmers into very complex large programs. One site
that contributed debuggers to the family of products for which I was the
lead designer, even referred to the initial simple working programs as
"first breath". Such change often occurs over a period of ten to
twenty years, interrupted periodically by the necessity to ship versions
as products. As a programmer and designer of computer language
compilers we spoke of such change as evolving the program. In fact many
of us, including myself believe that such evolution is the only way to
develop such large complex programs. Right now a large number of Linux
distributions exist, at some point I expect that only a few such
distributions will survive, typically the best in the sense of those
with the most users and those with backers who have the deepest pockets.
I have even seen such a projected weeding out referred to as Darwinian
selection, ie survival of the fittest.

Dave W

Dave W

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Received on Sat Jun 9 16:04:01 2007